This is just a working theory, but I’ve noticed that there’s a direct correlation between the obnoxious value of a toy gifted to your child and the amount of obnoxiousness you’ve bestowed upon the giver over the years. It’s like revenge disguised as love, wrapped in festive paper with curly bows.

For instance, my brother gave Abby a tea set for her birthday. Now this seems harmless and sweet enough at first glance. Until you notice the button that plays music, complete with quaint British accent. Which she likes to push. Over and over and over. And over, ad infinitum. Until it seeps into my brain and I wake up screaming about tea cups and plastic danishes.

I always thought I was a fairly decent sister. Apparently, he would disagree. We are 7 years apart with not much in common, so our time together was usually rather limited. However, I would try to tag along whenever I could. And I eavesdropped on more than a handful of telephone conversations. I even may have hit him as hard as I could in an area where guys prefer not to be hit, more than once, just because, as a little kid, I thought it was funny. I can understand why he may still hold some ill-will towards that one.

It’s not as if he was always so nice to me, either. We had the typical brother/sister relationship. Since I was younger, it was easy to either ignore me entirely or manipulate my naive mind for his gain. I can’t even count how many times I was grounded just by following his lead. Which reminds me, I think my nephew is in need of a drum set this year.

7 Responses

Yeah, that sucks pretty badly. I’ve grown up with my fair share time spent listening to annoying toys. Ones that play music, say the same three phrases, or the little action figures which end up on the floor that you happen to be walking across barefoot. Oy. I think a drum set is perfect revenge.
.-= Angel´s latest blog post… Last Teenage Summer =-.

Ahhh…sweet revenge. With my brother and I 10 years apart and living together for the first time – it’s been interesting. Teenage boys are messy.
Have fun giving your nephew a drum set.
And now cue the “mwa ha ha!!!”
.-= Restless Mama´s latest blog post… How to Scare Your Mother =-.

My brother-in-law was famous for getting my children the loudest, most obnoxious toys that ever have been made. He got my daughter this in-home skeeball set that DROVE. ME. BATTY. and a few years ago he got her this electronic dog with big doe eyes that you could give water to, so that it would crawl over to you, cock its leg and piss beside you on the floor. After the fifth year of toys like that I kind of snapped and told him to CUT IT THE FUCK OUT and reminded him that revenge was sweet. Now he gets them cool stuff, but he insists on buying them those musical cards, which are currently THE BANE OF MY EXISTENCE.
.-= mamatulip´s latest blog post… Oh look out, you rock n’ rollers =-.

Oh no! I guess that is true. I think they just keep making kids’ toys more and more obnoxious these days, too. My father claims that he can’t listen to “It’s a small world” without wanting to pull his hair out and go insane because every single one of my toys as a kid played that tune.
.-= Caity´s latest blog post: The Allman Brothers Concert =-.

I’m 8 and 10 years younger then my sisters and, as you can imagine, I really gave them a hard time growing up. Both of them were rather shy, and well… I wasn’t. If they even looked at a boy I would run over and grab him and tell him my sisters liked him. So now they have found a way to get a little pay back. I’m getting all the lovely noise maker toys too. Fortunately, I have a lot of patience for most of them so it hasn’t been as bad as they were hoping. That and my daughter could care less if the button she pushes actually does anything (since I removed all the batteries). But I know they are still plotting to find the one thing that will rattle my cage.